Editor's Note: The macro code has been revised per the reader comments. Our apologies for the confusion. (9/30/15)

I like to make buttons for things I do over and over, if only for a day. Yesterday I had to nest a lot of rectangle plates for the plasma machine. Before nesting, I had to draw the rectangle in individual files and save as AutoCAD 2004 for the older plasma machine.

So I made a button to select the rectangle command and start a rectangle at 0,0. It paused for the opposite corner then saved the file as 2004 and started a new file.

The macro:

^C^Crectang;0,0;\saveas;2004;\new;

Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer R.K. McSwain: Although you may not need to create rectangles in AutoCAD 2004 format over and over like Jerri, this is a good example of scripting a repetitive task to save you time. In Jerri's example, the task could be streamlined even more by defining a default template and then calling the QNew command instead of New. If you know the steps to manually complete a task such as this, it's probably possible to create a macro, script, AutoLISP routine, or recorded action to help you complete the task with minimal user time involved, which will speed up the process and eliminate errors.

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User comments

Comment by Cooper,Kent

Posted on 2015-09-01 10:11:48

I know it's just an example, but if someone wants to do that same task, I
believe the macro is missing a backslash between the second semicolon and
the SAVEAS, which would be the pause for the User to pick the opposite
corner of the rectangle.

Comment by McSwain,R.K.

Posted on 2015-09-07 10:59:22

Good Catch Kent. There are actually 2 slashes missing.
They are in Jerri's submittal, but must have been lost due to a formatting
error somewhere along the line.
The correct macro is:
^C^Crectang;0,0;saveas;2004;
ew;

Comment by McSwain,R.K.

Posted on 2015-09-07 11:00:13

It did it again. Something is stripping out the slashes. I will alert the
Cadalyst TIP team. Thanks.

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